UFCW | Wal-Marts War on Workers; Managers Speak Out (9/6)

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 6, 2002

Wal-Mart's War On Workers: Managers Speak Out For The First Time To Expose Wal-Mart's Dirty Campaign To Suppress Worker Rights
Newly Released Video Featuring Wal-Mart Managers And Workers Available At UFCW.org

Go behind the closed doors of management's secret meetings and find out the reality that Wal-Mart covers up with its smiling face. Intimidation, threats, profiling, surveillance, illegal firings and Orwellian double talk are integral parts of a corporate-wide culture and continuous campaign to crush worker organizing efforts according to Wal-Mart managers and workers featured in a newly released video, Wal-Mart's War On Workers.

For the first time, managers who were actually there as it happened tell the true story of Wal-Mart's war on workers. The words, the faces and the expressions of the managers and workers paint a grim picture of the reality behind the smiling face.

Highlights of the video include:

Supervisory personnel titled "people managers" profile and identify potential union supporters for heightened scrutiny, discipline, isolation or termination. Union busting manuals are hidden from workers, with managers instructed never to allow associates to see or even be aware of the manual. Secret management meetings are held in out of the way locations with directions to the meetings covertly slipped to key managers.
Every store manager has a hotline number to report any union activity, real or imagined, immediately to the "People Department" in Bentonville. Union busting is a key component of every manager's job, and drilling anti-union sentiment into every associate is a daily routine with the constant repetition of Wal-Mart's prescribed anti-union mantra, "I don't need third party representation, I can speak for myself."
The company's response to worker organizing activity can be ruthless and devastating to workers. A team from Bentonville descends on the offending store or Sam's club, and what follows is a steady dose of harassment, forced meetings, threatened job or benefit loss, browbeating of individual workers in meetings with multiple supervisors, promises of promotion or pay increases and discipline and often firings for those who refuse to capitulate to company pressure.

The video is part of a mass mobilization effort to ignite grass roots efforts across on the United States to demand that Wal-Mart obey the law, respect the rights of workers and create good jobs with living wages and family benefits. As the largest employer in the United States with over 900,000 American workers, Wal-Mart is setting, and sinking, the standards for wages, benefits and corporate conduct.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) an independent government agency has issued complaints against the retailer in 14 states for illegal firings, threats, intimidation and coercion.

Visit UFCW.org and see the video in its entirety. Bona fide reporters can receive a copy of the video.

The 1.4 million member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is America's neighborhood union with members working in local neighborhood grocery stores in virtually every community. UFCW members working in packing houses and food processing plants put dinner on the table for America's families. In nursing homes and hospitals, the UFCW is giving care a voice. And in chemical, textile, garment and manufacturing plants, the UFCW is making it in the U.S.A.

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